Letter from Jolla CEO: a strong Sailfish year ahead of us!

Ahoy all Jolla & Sailfish OS developers, fans, and followers,

A new year has again started, and moved fast to the second month. This is my first post as Jolla CEO, and I’d like to give all of you a proper update on last years’ events and what we expect for 2017. Here we go!

As a summary, the year 2016 was a good one for Sailfish OS and full of deliveries. We launched the Aqua Fish device together with Intex Technologies in India, brought the Jolla C along with the Community Device Program for our dear community, got a major deal and partner in Russia (more about it below), and started shipping with Turing Robotics. Sailfish OS 2.0 is now fully out there and making a mark to the world.

Inside the Jolla company, we’ve been working hard to stabilize our financial situation throughout 2016. We are now a slightly smaller company than before but with the stronger-than-ever Sailfish community the results have been significant: we’ve seen many new community ports, Sailfish 64 bit has progressed nicely, and we’ve got a lot of help in translating new Sailfish OS releases. Community has also done a great effort by getting the Android 6 BSP based adaptation and newer working with Sailfish OS, which helps Sailfish OS scale more easily to newer hardware. Overall there’s been a lot of contributions to the OS. A big thanks for all our active contributors, keep it up!

Five years of Jolla

Jolla turned 5 years last October. Throughout the journey we’ve experienced several ups and downs, and even after all the struggles, we are still here together with our strong community, and with new significant partners joining the Sailfish movement.

The journey we have gone through makes us very strong and puts us in a good position to pursue new opportunities. As we all realize, Sailfish OS is not about Jolla, and thus we have a great responsibility to be very focused and perform super well on chosen items, and be ready to leave some other things on the side. Jolla and Sailfish OS now have a very focused strategy, and our aim is to seriously deliver on that. Let’s talk about that.

Licensing and regional strategy carrying fruit

During 2016 we turned our business focus tightly to regional licensing and enabling digital ecosystems in emerging markets, such as the BRICS (*) countries. We have reached first milestones in carrying out this strategy, and our first concrete case is now in full swing in Russia. We have also received a lot of interest from corporate and governmental business sectors for independent and open mobile OS development projects, and for other regional licensing cases.

I’d like to clarify a few things about our Sailfish OS project in Russia. If you’re not aware of this yet, please check out our press release or this good article in Techcrunch.

Some people have asked that does this now mean that Sailfish OS will be delivering only to Russia to serve only their purpose. Well, I tell you it simply wouldn’t work like that for anybody. We’ve established a regional licensing model and now issued a license to a Russian partner to co-develop the OS together with all of us. During 2016 we have established a fully working and professional contribution model where the Russian Sailfish developers will contribute their code back to the common Sailfish OS, which Jolla maintains independently and with open access for any interested developers and parties around the world. This also means that Sailfish OS has got new a partner who invests to the development of the code, and all users of Sailfish OS will benefit of it. It is in the interest of all parties to develop and maintain compatibility of one Sailfish OS and not to create forks.

Next up: China, Latin America, Africa and Mobile World Congress!

Following the Sailfish project in Russia, we are now looking to expand our regional licensing strategy to other markets, in particular in BRICS countries. The massive China market is a key strategic opportunity for Jolla this year, which we’ll pursue strongly. Further, we can see emerging interest to Sailfish OS from various markets like Middle-East and Africa, and the Latin American markets. The political movements of the world seem to set the scene in many ways for 2017, and we expect those movements to enable further business opportunities for the only independent mobile OS, Sailfish.

Mobile World Congress, one of the most exciting and biggest events for the mobile industry is again around the corner end of this month in Barcelona. Sailfish OS will be there in collaboration with its partners, and you can expect to hear some new exciting announcements during the week.

Meet us in Barcelona! If you are planning to attend the event, please come to visit our booth and team in Hall 5 (5H19).

Tablet refunds and open sourcing

As Juhani communicated in his year-end post, we are committed to making the 2nd round of refunds for Jolla Tablet, as soon as our financial situation permits that. We’re not quite there yet but we’re working hard to improve the financial situation to enable the rest of the refunds. I know it is a lot to ask but please bear with us on this challenging journey. We now have a good outlook for the year, and wish to finalize also this project as soon as feasible.

Previously we’ve also mentioned that we’re working on the further open sourcing of Sailfish OS. We have now taken the necessary steps and preparations to enable us to further open source Sailfish code, in particular in the areas of apps and UI. We have a decision process ongoing but you should expect exciting news on this during upcoming months.

Jolla <3 Community

It’s almost a worn-out statement already but seriously: without the Sailfish community we would not be here. Our new strategy is also much dependent on you guys & gals, and thus we want to foster the ever-stronger Sailfish community. We’re planning for further Sailfish community devices and programs to empower the community and all Jolla & Sailfish fans.

Stay tuned, we hope to announce something exciting for you already in Mobile World Congress in a few weeks. Please also keep proposing new ideas to us! We promise to listen and try to turn them into plans and implementation as much as we can with our resources and in collaboration with all the Sailfish developers.

Looking forward to serve all the fans and partners of Jolla throughout 2017, and take us to new heights and success,

Add to the list: “notification and better access to store comments for developers”. I can feel the pain of developers that have to go check the comments on the phone everyday, just in case anybody wrote anything useful. In fact most don’t. Jolla itself doesn’t do that for their own apps.

As for point 1, it’s exactly what I said 2-3 years ago, when I first bought my phone. It should’ve been super mega high priority imho.
Maybe there could be some search filter if you want to find FOSS only or commercial apps only, but definitely there should be something to motivate developers to not abandon apps after the first few alpha releases.

" … keep proposing new ideas to us! We promise to listen and try to turn them into plans and implementation as much as we can with our resources and in collaboration with all the Sailfish developers. "

… I wonder though if for confidentiality reasons – competitors might be following as well 😉 – community members would get an option one day of communicating / discussing ideas & proposals privately with limited access to selected trusted / handpicked members of one’s / jolla community mgmt’s choice ?

I agree with Malk4ever. Have said the same for a long time. But the banking system is the problem I suppose. The options are:
creditcard (American ), Paypal (Thiel is a huge problem!), or Flattr (not a solution for everyone). For now I would choose the international creditcard, but actually I am waiting for an European payment system.
Paypal is embedded in the surveillance system that I do not want to support.

Still moaning about not having gotten your full refund? Then again that has been your life’s purpose since the campaign so I guess you’re not going to stop any time soon.

Also, that suggestion about selling devices with inflated prices so that greedy little sh*ts like you can get your money is just pure evil btw. You made a risky investment and it didn’t pan out, it’s that simple and you’re in no way entitled to other peoples’ money to cover for your own failed investment.

Sure made an investment hoping to get a tablet, but even more to support jolla. the the CEO promised the tablet, jolla told us we would get the refund, got half, still waiting for half if jolla can find the money. Still it’s all said by jolla, not me. Then you think I am greatly? I think you should focus on your money/contribution end leave the rest of the contributors to make up their minds.

Why should a commercial organization that lives on selling stuff get money from supporters that gets nothing back, and expect users to put more money in jolla in the future? That’s simply bad business for everyone.

And if jolla selling stuff, that people are buying, why do you blame me for being evil for cheering for refund when you want to decided how jolla spend their money from purchase where the customer actually got what they ordered? 😀

If you actually cared more about supporting Jolla than getting a tablet, why have you moaned about how you haven’t gotten all your money back in the comments to EVERY post in the Jolla blog for months and months? You always get your moaning in the same day the post is put up showing that you check in every day for new posts to write more moaning comments to.

Like with any investment, you’re absolutely not entitled to your money back if it all goes wrong. Yet because Jolla has promised to pay people back when they can you’ve taken on an attitude that you’re somehow entitled to all your money back, even if it comes out of the pockets of other people.

Just face it. You’re a greedy little git who made a bad investment and lost a bit of money. Taking money out of the money they have available to pay you back will not help them as seem to have deluded yourself. All it will do is hamper their ability to further develop SailfishOS and new devices.

You might as well demand that they start cutting off fingers and mailing them to you…

I see you didn’t read the blog when they actually explained how it all went wrong…

Those aliexpress Jolla tablets were made from parts Jolla’s contract manufacturer took for themselves when Jolla couldn’t pay them in full after an investor funding round fell trough. This supplier taking a good chunk of the parts as payment without even asking for permission when Jolla couldn’t pay them is the reason why not everyone got their tablet. Jolla had the parts to fill all the orders, but after the supplier just took a good chunk of them they simply didn’t have enough parts anymore. Not only that, some of the parts had gone out of production at that point so Jolla couldn’t even order more.

As for the investment, crowdfunding *is* a form of investment, pure and simple. You’re investing into a company to make a product that isn’t ready and as with all investments you run the risk of failure and losing your money. It’s still an investment even if you don’t get an ownership stake in the company.

It wasn’t Jolla’s decision either when the contract manufacturer for the tablet took a good chunk of the parts they couldn’t get any more of, used them to make a load of Android tablets (with the Jolla branding still intact) and sold them off to pay for bills Jolla didn’t have the money to pay for at the time.

Also, I’m pretty sure not having any new devices or software to offer is a much bigger detriment to the company than annoying a few idiots who still don’t understand how crowndfunding actually works…

Kind of ironic for you to tell me to get past the tablet project when you refuse to do just that and continue to moan about how you haven’t gotten all of your money back…

I personally hope Jolla does just that and continues working on new and improved products. Pissing away money, which they don’t have all that much of, on refunds is very much detrimental to this effort.

I keep calling you an idiot because you made a bad bet without realizing that you even made a bet and continue to refuse to admit you actually made a bet.

The problem with your combined refund and product launch is that they’re mutually exclusive. They can ether spend the money they have on product development or a giving the money away to investors like yourself. What you’re demanding is the functional equivalent of demanding that somebody who made a mistake commit suicide while working hard to make up for that mistake.

Besides, the good will of a few dozen people doesn’t do all that much good when it comes at the cost of product development coming to a complete halt. Jolla has obviously decided the future of the company is more important than satisfying a few dozen people.

Theodosius
on February 17, 2017 at 10:12 am

@L_A_G
I understand your point above and below, but in this case we have to differentiate between the word JOLLA (company) and INVESTORS of JOLLA.
First: The company JOLLA made some mistakes and did not deliver a product to the funding community (customers). Second: The money was partly paid back. Third: 2. half still missing. Fourth: Customers (funding community)gave money just to BUY a product. Fifthly: Customers gave the money to JOLLA (company)and not to the JOLLA INVESTORS. Sixthly: INVESTORS took funding communities money and stopped to make the next finance round. Seventh: One of the major JOLLA INVESTORS disappeared (with funding communities money).
Result: dilemma! Consequences: funding community has to “sit and wait”…
Funding community

1: People who took part in the indiegogo campaign ARE investors. When you take part in crowdfunding you don’t actually buy a product, you INVEST in a company and if the company is successful you get a type of dividend, in this case a tablet.

2: The money Jolla got from IndieGoGo was spent and the money that has been returned as been from money invested into the company by other investors.

3: The only investors that have been able to get at least part of their money back have been the indiegogo backers. The reason why Jolla didn’t have the money to pay the bills when the tablet was finally being manufactured was that they had planned on being able to get more money from other investors to pay for the manufacturing of the tablets, but were unable to find any investors who would do that.

Jolla very specifically said that this was because of a “round of funding”, which is where a company asks investors money for a stake in the company or a share or future profits. Thus what traditional investors did was not to take money out of the company, but rather refuse to put more money into the company.

To you this may be a question of semantics, but there’s a big difference between taking money out of a company and not putting any more money into it.

Omarteaux
on February 23, 2017 at 1:29 pm

Dear L_a_g, your vision of reward-based crowdfunding is problematic, to say the least. [Let me say straight away that I did not invest in the tablet, so my resentment is non existent. I own a jolla phone, and am mesmerised by sailfish os, so you could consider me a fan]. However, to invest in a crowdfunding campaign is not to bet in a casino. Nor is it to invest in a company: it is an investment in a project. Here, backers invested in the production and delivery of the jolla tablet, not in jolla in general. Of course, kickstarter investments are not legally protected, and it has happened that some successful campaigners ran away with the money. The only safeguard we have is then reputation costs. Whether you like it or not, Jolla has to overcome criticism ofmincompetence, or suspicions that it divested into other projects the funds received, period (to speak like you). So, to recognise errors in the management of the project is a start. To be fully transparent about how the money was used is another step. To invoke the risk inherent to financial investments in general, like you do, is exactly the opposite route to reestablishing trust in Jolla. Do you really want to sink the dinghy?

I for one was not an investor, I was a buyer of a “free desktop” tablet. I wanted to support Jolla, but I wanted a somewhat-libre tablet even more. If I don’t have a tablet with libre software I can play with, and also there isn’t one in sight, what exactly was I supporting?

I’m very forgiving when it comes to money. I’m supportive and understanding of Jolla’s financial situation. Nonetheless this situation is ridiculous.

You supported Sailfish and helped Jolla port it on tablets.
Thanks to that, you will maybe soon be able to buy Sailfish OS powered tablets, as some community members are trying to revive the Jolla Tablet. (Actually another person already can get you an Aigo x86 with Sailfish on it, more info at TMO).
Plus, Jolla is trying to reimburse what you invested 🙂

Hey Jolla.
Last year bought a intex aqua sailfish, my first sailfish device. Handsome OS, made my world a better place 🙂 Because of that, I have publish some apps to the harbour and have done some translations.
Hope to see some new devices anounced in MWC. Also I hope to see a new Jolla tablet somewhere in the future.
It’s been a while since your last post/tweet. Please keep then coming, I like to come here to check for news.
Keep sailling.

Since Nokia has returned to the smartphone market, I hope Nokia could make a sailfish phone. Don’t know if this is realistic.
Anyway, it’s very exciting to hear about the China market plan, as a fan from China I’m really looking forward to it. We actually have a Jolla fanbase here in China.http://tieba.baidu.com/f?ie=utf-8&kw=jolla
Good luck for 2017! 鸡年大吉！

thanks for the update. Just one question, when/where/how can I get a new phone with sailfish OS which with a bit better hardware (read camera and such) then the current one… no the Intex one or the Jolla C are not what I mean compared to the classic Jolla

Hey Jolla I have a ideia for you.
Since you’re talking about open sourcing the code, any plans for the future to merge sailfish libraries with the oficial Qt sdk ? Right now sailfish sdk is some versions behind Qt sdk. It seems to me that would be a good way to stay updated with latest Qt development and give developers a unified enviroment.

Hello,
why does Jolla not sell the OS together with an installer tool for common Android devices. Like it was for PC OS in the old days. So we could buy an existing device and just buy an extra OS and install it.

two things:
– monetization support, ads and IAP (via Qt/QML Purchase, http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtpurchasing-index.html)
– new devices with moderate hw AND great camera. Do whatever HMD ask and support some of its devices officially

then I will not just buy those devices but develope/port some cool games… 😉

Funny, it was mentioned about Turing Robotics, but seems they struggle with money as Jolla. message from https://www.facebook.com/turingroboticindustries/ :
“because of an inability of turing to pay its business partners, turing can no longer use this page to communicate with its customers and fans”

Have they gave their facebook account somebody to care for a money? Or somebody has hacked it? I don’t know, but I know Turing Phone is really impressive and one of the most safe devices I have ever seen. And also very uncommon UI. That “statement” would not stop me from buying Turing Phone.

The way I understood that was that they had to give control of their facebook page as collateral to their creditors. I suspect this may not have been the only thing they had to give as collateral.

Still, I wish they had gotten to the point where they started selling the Turing phone to the wider public. The original Jolla phone is now over 3 years old and was never a high end device when new, but still has a very smooth UI considering the specs. I almost start drooling at the thought of how smooth the UI on a Jolla device with a Snapdragon 800-class SoC would be.

I thought Pharephone is supported, isn’t it?… That was to be my eventual repacement if efforts to buy Jolla would definitely fail… But with Android and without Sailfish that would be noy interesting at all, at last for me. What a pity.

I got Intex Aquafish last year. I am enjoying the fluidity of the OS. must say, i dont like touching Android anymore . switching is so fast. i do not use Android on my device. Jolla should try to bring sailfish native apps only! on sailfish devices. No Android . should encourage developers to make more usable and practical apps.

I’m one of the people waiting for the refund.
I hope there we’ll be a new device. I’m doing a massive use of my Jolla 1 and I’m looking forward to see for a new Sailfish device. I’m thinkin that I’ll change the refund with a discount price on a new device :).

Guys sorry I have to break my promise to shut up for a while, and CEO thanks for breaking another bad news to us.

I would let it rest for a while .. if some other users here would have done the same.

But due to mindless shit written here, I have to support Dave999 as some complete mindless person (L_A_G if the shoe fits and let me tell you it fits you perfectly) thinks he is able to rule over mine or other tablets backers wallet.

A big middle finger to you and all that support your opinion here sir. What on earth gives you the right to judge about some honest people who are still waiting on a so many times promised Tablet by Jolla (you know like hell it was promised more than once).

This whole tablet shit storm and the refund project is taking so freakin’ long that now you think we must shut up ?

Sir let me tell you one thing .. if anything can be concluded about the ridiculous duration of all of this is that Jolla let the backers DOWN more than ever.
(These backers are supporters of the first hours don’t you forget that!! )

Fine if you can miss these dollars out of your pocket but that does not go for all of us, and who are you to judge.

You and your stupid judging makes me raging angry !

So apologies to anyone who is offended by my language here but it has a proper cause, please send your complaints to L_A_G and Jolla as if they had done what they had promised initially (and over again) we would NEVER HAD THIS DISCUSSION !!!

Please I have only one request from you, may be you are small company right now and also financially weak but I want you to never give up as we as a Sailfish users have a lot of expectations from the OS which I believe is the most advance and intuitive alternative for dated iOS and Android who are on their peek of upgrades. Please keep our faith alive that it will dethrone Android and iOS before 2020 and will come out as a major player in OS market. Its just a start and there is more way to go.

I backed a tablet too. Got half of the amount back and donated the other half to Jolla. Please TABLET BACKERS STOP WHINING. It does not help. ‘You can’t take feathers from a bold chicken’. So stop this and take your loss. Now I want to urge Sailfish developers to improve Sailfish in such a way that we can use every feature on Faitphone and on Sony Xperia. So give that license to them. With Android support, Here, everything.
If you want to go on, then do it well. Create a decent appstore, pay developers, let customers pay for full feature apps. Only then Sailfish can become a real alternative for Google and Apple.
I still like Sailfish, but I am also still annoyed that it does not work properly without a Google account. That I only can get half working android apps with ads, because they are the free version. Jolla people, offer us a real alternative, not an amateuristic disabled one.